Monday, December 10, 2018

.... But more than anything else, Detective Lieutenant John Russo is the "Achilles Heel" for any attempt at a retrial of Chanel Lewis

"Hero cop" --- AH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA !!! --- Neighborhood vigilante and thug is more like it --- and --- pretty much a "Bully boy" - "On the job"

THE PRESS REALLY NEEDS TO LOOK MORE CLOSELY INTO THIS GUY, DET. LT. RUSSO --- AND EVERYBODY NEEDS TO ASK WHY IT TOOK HIM NEARLY SIX MONTHS TO GET MORE DEEPLY INVOLVED IN THIS MURDER CASE THAN HE HAD BEEN PREVIOUSLY

NYPD Detective Lieutenant John Russo testified in court in the Vetrano-Lewis case about his first encounter(s) with a man that he later fingered as the man guilty of the murder of Karina
Vetrano. Russo said that his recollections from his May 30 & 31, 2016 encounters with Chanel Lewis were that: he saw an "out of place'' man wearing 'long sleeves' and his "hood up in warm weather"; that "[a]fter several minutes of watching, [he] believed [Chanel Lewis] was
about to commit or had previously committed a burglary... so [Russo said he] called 911 and
reported a suspicious a male....." ; all told, Russo testified the he had been watching Chanel Lewis' unusual behavior for
nearly an hour on that first day; and that on the following day, Russo tracked Lewis down in
the same area and called detectives to question him.

Hmmmmm !!! "[O]ut of place" --- "... believed he was about to commit or had previously committed a burglary..." --- what a neighborhood watcher that John Russo was at the end of May 2016 --- a regular "Black Knight"..... If only it had ended there; however, surely, it did not.

All of that was reported in a very good compilation by the Daily Mail about the Vetrano-Lewis trial (See "High-ranking NYPD cop who cracked the Queens jogger case
recalls his dramatic first encounter with the man who brutally 'raped and
strangled' Karina Vetrano" by Jessica Schroeder & Snejana Farberov, 11/9/18 [updated 11/12/18], Daily Mail/ Dailymail.com [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6370655/NYPD-officer-cracked-Queens-jogger-case-testifies-court.html]).

That very same Daily Mail report stated that "[Chanel Lewis'] dramatic arrest came eight months later during [an] investigation in[to] the killing of Karina Vetrano, who was murdered in the same
area Russ[o]l had his encounter with Lewis.... Russo ordered detectives to track him down, and they ultimately
found DNA from [Chanel Lewis'] home that matched the DNA at the crime scene...."

That sort of begs two questions: how was it that an "off duty" and "volunteer" Det. Lieut. John Russo could "order" detectives to do anything; and why did it take him all of six months into the Vetrano murder investigation to throw his substantial NYPD weight around.

Of course you can have volunteer detectives, wasn't Phil Vetrano a volunteer fireman for 9/11.Let me use some detective termin-analogy; it sort of like the difference between Dunkin' and Krispy-Kreme. Sometimes you go lookin' for one and other times you go lookin' for the other.

10:31 you're are a genius.Nothing about the NYPD'S alleged late May 2016 following, stopping, and harassing of Chanel Lewis makes any sense, because Russo made most of that story up about five months after Karina Vetrano was murdered. On May 30th & 31st a real off-duty busybody named John Russo got involved in hasling a black kid for hanging out in Howard Beach; and he made sure that the kid got the real treatment including getting bicycled out to the Rockaways. But Russo made sure the kid's name stayed buried deep by seeing to it that the kid didn't didn't formally get charged. It wasn't a problem until Russo suddenly needed to find Chanel Lewis again; that's when the convoluted fabrications about May 30th and 31st had to be concocted.

The DNA find at Chanel Lewis' house is classic misdirection. The real trick was to find some of DNA from the right kind of suspect on the body and at the scene. And compared to all the DNA that was found on Karina Vetrano's body and at the scene, Chanel Lewis' was only a tiny sample, and who knows when and by whom that got there or into the samples provided to the testers.

128, you are half right, but that still leaves you half wrong. The police gathering the voluntary DNA sample at the home of Chanel Lewis was the watershed moment in this case, but for reasons that nobody seems to have have mentioned yet. Plus, nobody has talked about the defense team's running their own independent DNA tests, like running a profile taken from their own client and comparing it with the profile of the three samples taken from the crime scene and from the victim's body done by the Medical Examiner.A new trial means a whole new ballgame when it comes to the DNA.

Interesting how if you just read the press accounts the smoking guns are in plain sight. Not only on the Howard Beach story. Other things.

I keep hearing on CNN that President Obama warned trump about Mike Flynn in that December meeting in the oval office before Trump was sworn in. Obama warned him Flynn was dirty and Obama was right. Flynn took $500,000 from the turkish government. As NSA advisor what Flynn did was treason. My point is how did Obama know about Flynn? Obviously the Obama White house was spying on Trump.

It's almost as important as your immediate 'in plain sight' observation that $500,000 can be enough money to make some people with a bad character do bad things in the course of working as a high level public servant in a position of trust and responsibility.

The defense team should make a motion right now to renew their earlier preclusion motion, and in addition, make a motion to dismiss based upon the inadequacy of any evidence that could withstand the reasonable doubt standard. This is especially true given the trial record of the shoddy DNA evidence from the OCME barely linking Chanel Lewis to the crime scene and/or the victim, and given the NYC Medical Examiner's history of abusing a variety DNA protocols; and Chanel Lewis' incredible and factually inaccurate 'confession' following his more than night long, un-recorded and cartoon-fueled custodial interrogation.

Once this case gets into the Second Department appellate court it would be bounced in a second, especially the 'rock solid' DNA part.

Only about 45 minutes of the overnight time Chanel Lewis was first in custody is recorded on video. That means none of what the cops say was 'six hours' of interrogation, and none of the rest of the very long period of Chanel Lewis's custodial isolation, including a marathon showing of what cops described as 'cartoons,' is available for scrutiny.

One correction there, 'at 6:06 AM,' Chanel Lewis was in police custody in Howard Beach for the first time in May 2016, when they gave him a summons and dumped him in the Rockaways.

I'm confused about this though, how many 911 calls were made about Chanel Lewis hanging out in Howard Beach in May 2016? I know that Det. Lieut. Russo made one, because I heard it on You Tube and Russo testified to that at the trial. On the other hand, right after Chanel Lewis was arrested, Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said that Russo was responding to a 911 call by a neighbor in Howard Beach. Why lie about something as silly and seemingly unimportant as that?

But this is really the unbelievable part. It turned out that Russo 'tracked down' Chanel Lewis at least TWICE in May 2016. The first time, Russo said he trailed Lewis for about an hour, called in his 911 call, but Lewis got away before any other cops arrived. And the second of those times, the next day, actually, Russo tracked Lewis down and was present while other cops patted him down and questioned him. Then Russo forgot about Lewis completely for six months, while the NYPD was looking for any suspects in the Vetrano murder case.

How could Chanel Lewis get from his home near the intersection of Blake Avenue and Essex Street in Brooklyn to the murder scene near the Vetrano home in Howard Beach, probably covering more than 3.5 miles [given the route that the NYPD said that he took] and then return by the same or a similar route and not have his image captured on any public or private video surveillance cameras. That's a minimum of seven miles back and forth.

VERY IMPORTANT BACKFILL: THE “ ‘GOTHAMIST’ WAS ONTO THIS DET.LIEUT. RUSSO JAZZ A WHILE AGO” EDITION

LET'S GET BACK TO THE ISSUES RAISED IN MY MAIN POST ABOVE ABOUT DET. LIEUT. JOHN RUSSO.....

In a very good compilation of the prosecution's case against Chanel Lewis, the "Gothamist" very early on raised some very pithy questions about Detective Lieutenant John Russo and his testimony in the Vetrano-Lewis Case that have not yet been adequately answered, either in court or in the press (See “Videos Show Confession And Confusion From Karina Vetrano's Alleged Killer” by Max Rivlin-Nadler 11/12/18, Gothamist[http://gothamist.com/2018/11/12/chanel_lewis_confessions_vetrano.php]).

Here is a relevant excerpt from that November 12th article:“…. The circumstances that led to Lewis’s arrest were relayed in court this past Thursday, when John Russo, an NYPD lieutenant commander of detectives, described how he spent at least an hour of Memorial Day 2016 driving around and following a ‘suspicious’ individual in the neighborhood surrounding his Howard Beach home. Russo was off-duty at the time, and had his two daughters in the backseat of his car as he tracked an individual who ended up being identified as Chanel Lewis. He testified in court he found Lewis to be ‘suspicious’ because he was walking around in a hoodie, even though the weather was in the eighties on that afternoon.... Eventually, Russo called 911 to report the suspicious individual who was walking around the neighborhood. On Thursday, prosecutors played the 911 call…. ‘He’s looking in yards around different blocks, just by himself,' he tells the dispatcher. He describes Lewis as a 'dark-skinned male.’... The next day, Russo received an email alert about a suspicious person in Howard Beach, just as he was going off-duty. He raced to the scene and watched as the person, who turned out to be Lewis, was stopped and frisked by police. Lewis was never arrested that day, telling officers he was in the neighborhood to look for a place to eat. The officers then drove Lewis, who is from East New York, to the Rockaways, where they dropped him off at a McDonalds. It is unclear why the officers did this, and their reasoning has never been explained in court.... Russo, strangely enough, then reported seeing Lewis in the Rockaways later that same day, as the Lieutenant went out to eat with his family.... Russo’s job with the NYPD is to oversee all active investigations in New York City, including, at the time of the arrest, the Vetrano murder investigation. What triggered Russo’s memory after six months of an increasingly desperate investigation, where the NYPD had seemingly run out of productive leads, has also never been explained in court. Russo had been following Lewis around Howard Beach and made the 911 call just over two months before the murder….”

About Me

I formerly have commented on various political blogs concerning Republican politics. Although the focus of my political commentary has been on the Brooklyn GOP and other aspects of politics in Brooklyn, I have also posted commentary about national matters.
If you wish to contact Galewyn Massey directly, please, Email to galewynmasban@gmail.com